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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Pete McMartin: Floods! Crime! Crack videos! And, um, bike lanes!

Here in paradise, even the slightest disturbance is worthy of the front page

Then-GVRD chairman George Puil peers over his glasses during a meeting in 2001. He was correct 13 years ago about how to fund TransLink, and now thinks the Cornwall and Point Grey bike lane plan is a bad idea.

Photograph by: Bill Keay
, Vancouver Sun

In Montreal, they’ve moved police headquarters into city hall to facilitate the arrest of whatever crime boss inhabits the mayor’s chair.

In Toronto? Rob Ford. Enough said.

And in Calgary, where the consensus is floods are God’s work, not Man’s, the only citizens who enjoyed the rising waters were the Calgary Zoo’s hippos, which, tasting freedom for the first time, floated out of their enclosure and almost escaped into the Bow River.

And here, in Vancouver?

What disaster has transfixed us during the sweetest summer in recent memory?

A bike lane.

Yet again.

But this time, the bike lane goes down a scenic street through an upper-middle class west-side neighbourhood, which, I guess, makes it worthy of front-page coverage by every major news media outlet in town, because if it was a bike lane on the east side or in a suburb, no one would give a damn, and rightfully so. But then that’s the thing about the privileged life: Wealth magnifies everything. When you inhabit paradise, the merest disturbance to your perfection convinces you you’re living in hell.

Case in point:

Two weeks ago, I got a call from George Puil, former Vancouver city councillor. He left a message on my answering service asking that I do a story on the plans for the bike lane down Cornwall and Point Grey Road. He thought the plans were “incredible” — and by “incredible,” he meant incredibly bad. He thought the issue was worth “a major story.”

I didn’t think it was, and I didn’t call him back right away because I dearly wanted to ignore the story. But I have a lot of time for Puil, and we talked some days later.

Puil, now 83, lives in the tony Kits Point neighbourhood, by which the bike lane would run.

He is not against bikes, he said: He owns three of them, which he assured me he uses, and — while he was on the subject of environmental sensitivity — he also owns a Toyota Camry hybrid which, he said, he fills up only once a month.

Puil, in his political life, was also known as a friend to mass and rapid transit. He helped bring Vancouver International Airport in on the Canada Line. And in 2000, as chair of TransLink, Puil championed a $75 vehicle levy to fund what would soon be TransLink’s burgeoning debt.

Motorists were not amused. The media, including myself, uniformly condemned the idea as crackpot. The idea died, and with it, Puil’s political future.

Puil was right, though. The levy would have solved much of TransLink’s funding problems, and motorists, who now face everything from tolls to taxes to pay for TransLink’s red ink, should be kicking themselves for being short-sighted. (And I would later admit in a column that Puil was right and I was wrong.)

It was because of all this history that I saw some irony in Puil’s complaints about a bike lane down Cornwall and Point Grey Road. He was for bikes, but not on a bike lane that went past his neighbourhood.

(That bike lane, by the way, would only be of minimal inconvenience to Puil, since it would mean his having to turn into Kits Point one road farther down than he normally does. But then Puil has been in this position before. He was involved in an attempt to reroute tour buses away from the Maritime Museum, which Puil lives near.)

Squaring all of this with Puil’s past was a difficult thing to do. Over a decade ago, Puil, as chair of TransLink, saw a problem that other politicians hadn’t, or hadn’t had the guts, or foolhardiness, to take to the public. He knew that if mass transit was to grow in Metro, a price would have to be paid, and motorists, who were enjoying huge subsidies to use their cars, should naturally be the ones to pay it. He anticipated the future. And Puil is justifiably proud for being right when so many were wrong.

But that was just over 10 years ago.

Think how much the street landscape has changed in just that short time. Think how much we have changed in that time. Dedicated bikes routes cross the entire city. Speed bumps and traffic circles are common on residential streets. To keep invasive auto traffic at bay, there is restricted ingress and egress to and from residential neighbourhoods (the first example of which was in Shaughnessy, when Puil lived there).

And think how much the streetscape will change in another 10. Think how much it will have to change. Bikes will be part of that change.

The bike lane down Cornwall and Point Grey is a good idea.

Can we please now move on until we come to a real problem? Summer lasts only so long.

Then-GVRD chairman George Puil peers over his glasses during a meeting in 2001. He was correct 13 years ago about how to fund TransLink, and now thinks the Cornwall and Point Grey bike lane plan is a bad idea.

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